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B y the time Doreen finally got home, she felt a little bit ragged. She also had absolutely no updates, and the captain hadn’t volunteered any update on the poor midwife’s death either.

Could it really have been just a simple heart attack? Or was something much more nefarious going on? Her instincts had been to run right to Mack, but, with his being tied up in court, she hadn’t had much choice but to go to the captain. So, if he saw this as anything more nefarious, she didn’t know.

She had to admit that it had been really helpful to have Mack around most of the time to talk to about all the things that she needed to discuss in relation to her cold cases. He was really good about that. And he was good for so much else too. So it was a hardship not having him around, and maybe that was a good lesson for her to learn.

She put on the teakettle and looked down at the DNA kit that she had up on her laptop screen. She tried to buy one in town but hadn’t had any success. So, she ordered it without letting herself think twice, knowing it would be a few days yet before it was delivered. She quickly phoned Richie, but he didn’t answer. Frowning, she thought about that and realized it could just as easily be their card game night or something. As she glanced around her kitchen, she sighed, wondering at what point in time she would become a person with no concept of a nightlife.

It was odd to see Mack, as he walked in the door a little bit later. He looked at her, then seeing her face, asked, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she replied, walking over and giving him a hug.

His arms closed around her frame, and he just wrapped her up. There was something so comforting and safe about that large expanse of a capable man just holding her. When she pulled back, she looked up at him. “It’s a very strange cold case.”

He nodded. “Let me grab a coffee, and you can tell me all about it.”

“Are you sure? You’re so busy with the trial that I know you don’t have the time to get involved with this.”

“No, I may not get involved, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be here on the outside, getting an update,” he shared. “I’ve already talked to the captain about it a little bit.”

“Right, and a little bit is a help,” she muttered, “but I’ll say this just once, and you’ll never hear it from me again.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Okay, what will I never hear again?”

She collapsed down beside him and said, “I really miss you on this case.”

He looked at her in surprise, put down his coffee, then leaned in and pulled her into another hug. “Sometimes on these cases, we just need somebody to talk things over with. It’s not that they’re hard or complicated. It just helps to get another viewpoint.”

She nodded and settled back. “And I know this is one the captain doesn’t want to move on with, not unless we have better proof,” she muttered, preparing her air quotes, “because the whole family is, shall we say, posh .”

He laughed. “From somebody who’s come from posh as you have, I doubt they are posh in the same sense.”

“Maybe not,” she admitted, with a smile. “But I don’t really consider myself posh anymore.”

“I don’t know that you ever did,” he pointed out, with a gentle smile. “And that’s a good thing because now you are you, and we much prefer you as you really are, than as someone trying to be what they think they are supposed to be, even if it’s posh .”

“Let me tell you about the change in this case now.” Then she filled him in on Richie. Mack stared at her and then whistled. “Exactly,” she agreed. “Now I’ve ordered a DNA kit for him, and we’ll go through the process and upload it on the ancestry site because he’s not sure whether Baby Jane could have been his child or not.”

“Interesting,” Mack muttered in a far-off tone of voice.

“What are you thinking?” she asked him.

“I’m just wondering if Buck may have found out the child wasn’t his, then abused the poor child. It’s not as if it’s the child’s fault—”

“You and I both know that children pay for all kinds things they couldn’t possibly deserve, despite what their parents think.”

“Unfortunately that is very true. It will be interesting to see the results from the DNA. That old devil Richie,” Mack noted with a chuckle, shaking his head.

“He’s pretty upset about the idea that it could be his daughter. He has sons, but he never did have a daughter,” she noted.

“Ah, so it’s the one that never was.”

“Also, just because Buck abused his wife doesn’t mean he was into abusing children.”

“Also… just because Iris told Richie that Buck hit her and spun a story, we don’t know for sure that it was true.”

“Right,” she acknowledged, “and I don’t have you on the other end to run some data in terms of arrests and criminal records.”

“Did the captain not do that?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know if he would do it personally or would give it to somebody else to run. Even so, I don’t know that he would share the findings with me. I’m not usually in the loop of things.”

“I can do that in the morning,” he muttered, and then he stopped and swore. “No, I can’t. I’m sorry. I have to start my day at the courthouse.”

She winced and reached out a hand. “I’m sorry you have to spend so much time in court. That must be miserable.”

“It’s part of the job. Once in a while you get a case where you wish they would just let you go back and do the job you’re supposed to be doing. Instead they keep dragging you in to find other experts on all this stuff,” he muttered. “And it’s fine, and we’re winning the case. Still, it would just be nice if it didn’t have to be this way. This part of my job is no fun.”

“Of course,” she agreed, “especially when you go through all that hard work to capture somebody…”

He nodded and then raised an eyebrow, as he focused on her. “That’s why I’m always on your case about making sure the evidence is clean, so we know for sure the case is locked down and tied up.”

She winced at that and then laughed. “Right, and I’m hearing the admonishment in your tone.”

“Every once in a while,” he noted, his lips twitching, “you do get a little bit overenthusiastic, and, without the proof, we’re really stuck trying to prove something in court.”

“You mean, without the evidence,” she pointed out. “However, I have done pretty well in getting you the evidence you need.”

“What you’ve done in most cases,” he clarified, looking right in her eyes, “is gotten confessions. And thankfully, so far, nobody has really been trying to back out of those confessions.”

“What happens in that case?”

“It depends on the circumstances,” he replied. “Sometimes the juries think it’s just the lawyer’s recommendation that the defendant should recant their confession, thinking they’ll have a better chance at trial. And sometimes it might work that way. I don’t know.” Mack shrugged. “I just try to do my job and to bring in the cases and to put the best evidence we can come up with into the prosecutors’ hands, and then leave the rest to them.”

“Until they take you to court.”

He groaned. “Until they take me to court, and I have to back up everything,” he muttered, with a chuckle. “It’s not as if this one will be bad. It’s just… there’s an awful lot of problems.”

“I didn’t even ask what court case it was.”

He looked at her and nodded. “I was surprised you didn’t because it’s your neighbor Steve.”

She looked at him and blinked. “Oh my.”

“Yeah, oh my is right. We moved the court case ahead, and we have a second filing happening. Of course Steve’s been heavily involved in other crimes—fraud, tax evasion, and the list goes on and on. And we need him. They offered him a deal to get the rest of the people he’s involved with.”

“What does he have?”

“He’s got some connections to the gangs,” he muttered. “So, we need him to roll on some of them, but, in order to do that, we have to convict him for these murders first.”

“I thought you were supposed to make a deal before conviction.”

He laughed. “That’s very true, and normally that’s exactly what would happen. In this case, however, he’s being quite cagey, thinking he’ll be let off without a problem.”

“He’ll get let off with all those bodies buried on his property?” she asked in horror. “Actual bodies were found there.”

“We haven’t quite gotten through all that yet in this trial. Yes, all those bodies were found on his property, and his DNA was all over the bodies. It’s a pretty iron-clad case from that perspective, but we need more than just getting him convicted on all these crimes.”

“Right,” she muttered, shaking her head. “I can’t even begin to understand all that. I don’t know why you don’t just lock him away and throw away the key.”

He laughed. “At times I agree 100 percent, but we still have to do our due diligence.”

She smiled and nodded. “You didn’t eat, did you?”

“Did you cook?” he asked, staring at her.

“Uh,… no. I didn’t really have a whole lot of free time, since I was busy working on the case.”

His lips twitched, and he nodded. “And if working on the case versus cooking was your choice…”

“Then working on the case would win.” She chuckled. “Yet, when I went looking to buy a DNA kit, I did pick up some pork chops.” She hesitated, then frowned at him. “I just don’t really know how to cook them.”

He burst out laughing. “If you don’t mind, I won’t barbecue pork chops today, not given the weather out there.”

“I know,” she agreed. “It’s miserable out there. I was thinking the bad weather would be over soon.”

“Oh, we’ll definitely have a very early spring, but, right now, Old Man Winter is being cranky, so we’ll leave him to it for tonight. Let’s just see what we can do about cooking those suckers inside,” he suggested, walking to the refrigerator. “How many did you buy?”

“Four,” she replied, looking at him. “I was thinking three for you and one for me.”

“Normally I would be totally okay with that,” he stated, “but I want to confirm that you’re eating more.” Frowning at her, he added, “So, it’s okay to share two and two, you know?”

“Sure, it might be okay to share two and two,” she conceded, with a smile, “but I also bought asparagus.”

“Ah, so that’s what you’re looking forward to.”

“I really am,” she admitted, still smiling.

Together they sorted out exactly what they would do, as they prepared their meal. Then, with her watching the asparagus she was steaming, he did something to the pork chops that she didn’t quite understand. Yet they came out crispy on the outside and moist and tender on the inside.

“I just wrapped them in parmesan,” he shared, by way of explanation.

“I don’t even think I saw that,” she muttered.

“No, I think you were too busy worrying about the asparagus.”

“It is important,” she muttered, as she gave him a smirk.

“It absolutely is important,” he agreed, grinning, “but, while you were doing that, I was doing this.”

“Oh, fine,” she muttered. And very quickly they were sitting down to a delicious meal.

While they happily dug into the food, she asked, “Will we have to bring Richie into this?”

“I don’t know,” he stated. “I don’t see why we would, unless it happens Baby Jane’s DNA is a match to his DNA. If Richie is the father of the unidentified toddler, and the DNA testing shows that conclusively, then it’s a whole different story. At that point, it’s likely we would have to go back through his life.”

“He says he didn’t know anything about a baby. So, if it does turn out to be his and—”

“Do you believe him?” Mack asked, cutting her off.

She pondered that, thinking about the old man and how emotional he’d gotten. “I do. I think, in this case, if that had been his child, and he’d known about her from the beginning, he would have done anything he could to look after her.”

“Is he that guy , but no one knows until it is right in front of you because of the gruff exterior he puts on at times?”

“Yes, but I do believe him. He also wanted very much to look after Iris. But Buck, being her legal husband, was apparently pretty angry about Richie’s involvement with his wife, so that wasn’t to be.”

“That’s understandable too,” Mack replied. “Nobody would be too happy about some other guy being with their wife. Plus, we have to remember how things were back then.”

“Do we though?” she asked, sounding angrier than she should. “Buck still abused his wife.”

“If we can believe Iris,” Mack reminded her. “I would have to check if any domestic violence calls were made to the cops back then. Even if we have those 9-1-1 calls, and even if she went to the hospital with unexplained injuries, why would she ever go back to Buck?”

Doreen snorted, turning to look at Mack. “I know perfectly well why she went back to Buck.”

Mack winced, then snagged her into his arms and pulled her close. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring up that ex of yours—even if by association.”

“And you didn’t,” she declared. “It’s just one of those things that I am constantly reminded of. People bring up Mathew so casually and so often. Thus, when it comes to Iris, I understand what she felt.” He nodded. “Sometimes I felt as if a mineshaft waited for me, with every step I took.”

Mack didn’t stop her as she vented.

“And no marriage should be that way, so full of fear and anger.… I know that I should have left him the very first time he hit me. I knew better than anyone else how bad things were in our marriage,” she muttered. “Yet I didn’t have the self-confidence or the monetary wherewithal to get out there and into the world. The worst part was that I let Mathew take away my own sense of self.”

“But now you have both,” Mack pointed out.

“Sure, but at what cost?” she asked. “Since I went through that experience, I’ll never judge a woman who stays. It’s way too easy to judge, standing on the outside looking in.”

“When you get some of your settlement money in, you can always do something to help the local women’s shelter, if you wanted to.”

“Oh, I hadn’t considered that,” she exclaimed, looking at him.

“Once you figure out your finances,” he suggested, “there are all kinds of places that would be more than happy to get some money from you. In the case of the Kelowna shelter, it would help support other women who are trying to change their lives and to get out of bad situations.”

“It doesn’t seem to matter where you live, that horrid scenario is probably happening worldwide. Maybe not everywhere, but I imagine it’s pretty global as issues go. It’s way worse in a lot of other countries,” she added, “and not even considered a crime in many.”

“So true, but that’s not where we live, and you’re doing just fine now.”

She smiled as she looked up at him. “I am doing fine. Do you want some tea or something?”

“No, I think I’ll head home. I need some sleep.” He smiled at her. “And you need to put all this to rest, at least for tonight.”

She winced, not sure what to say to him. When she didn’t reply, he went on.

“The DNA for Richie will take quite a while, so don’t worry about that. Nothing you can do until the kit gets here and you take the swab and send it off,” he explained. “Then you’ll still have to wait for the results.”

“I know,” she grumbled. “It’s just frustrating, and it seems as if I’m always waiting, which is definitely not my strong suit.”

“It is frustrating to wait, and I understand that it isn’t your strong suit, but that’s one of the things I love about you,” he declared, giving her a big smile. “It’s good for you to see how much trouble some of this evidence-gathering stuff can be.”

“Good for me? Why? I find it quite depressing.”

“Exactly,” he agreed, “but it’s also very depressing to have a case get thrown out of court because evidence wasn’t collected properly or was tampered with or was otherwise suspect in some way.”

She winced. “Yeah, got it. I hear you.”

He laughed, then bent down to cuddle Mugs, who seemed to be looking for attention ever since Mack had arrived. “Don’t you just love this guy?” he said, as he squatted to give him even more of a cuddle.

“He seems to be feeling particularly unloved at the moment,” she muttered. “Not sure what’s going on, and they’re all a bit out of sorts. Could be the weather, I guess, and our lack of walks.”

“Could be our heavy conversations. Animals are sensitive to our emotions,” he noted. “Maybe they don’t understand that we’re irritated at the process, at the players in the case, instead thinking we are arguing, just wondering if everything is okay here at home.”

“Maybe because you’re not here all the time?” she asked, looking at him.

“Because I’m not here, because you’re off doing something else, and”—he smiled at her—“I rather imagine they’re picking up on your impatient energy just as easily.”

“That’s probably quite true,” she agreed, with a nod. “They’re also not sleeping as well as they could be.”

“Have you had any nighttime visitors?” he asked, his tone sharp.

“I don’t think so. Nobody knows me.”

“Says you, but it seems as if everybody knows about you, and not everybody has a positive opinion.”

“I do get that. Sometimes I make enemies without even trying.”

He smiled. “The enemies don’t matter. You’re making the right friends, and that’s what matters more.”